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The Graduate School Application Process
- University of Iowa Press
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55 The Graduate School Application Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Many Schools Should You Apply To? The difficulty with applying to graduate programs in creativewriting is the same difficulty with trying to get your work accepted by a magazine insofar as the odds are stacked against you, even if you’re talented. It’s not uncommon for students with very strong writing samples to collect rejections from all the schools to which they’ve applied. The number of applications that some of these programs receive is simply overwhelming. Another factor is the subjectivity of the people reading your samples. I applied to only four master’s programs: the University of Iowa, University of Arizona, University of Southern Mississippi, and Stanford University (this was back in the 1980s when Stanford still offered an MA in creative writing). I assumed Iowa and Stanford, by far the most competitive schools, would reject me. I was banking on acceptances from Arizona and Southern Mississippi. As it turned out, I received acceptances only from Iowa and Southern Mississippi. Iowa’s program was—and still is—the most competitive creative writing program in the country, so how was it that I could get into Iowa while receiving rejections from two schools that didn’t receive nearly as many applications? Obviously, my writing sample didn’t appeal as much to the facultyat Stanford and Arizona as did thewriting samples of other applicants. There’s nothing more mysterious to it than that, really. At the end of the day, after the pile of manuscripts has been winnowed down to the competent ones, the people judging the writing samples will go by their gut.This isn’t a science, after all, and what readers are searching for in a story is sometimes rather elusive: an original voice, a vision, an organic structure. I recommend applying to at least ten schools. Don’t apply to just the ten most competitive creative writing programs in the country . Find some less competitive schools that appeal to you. Include a couple of safety schools as well, though let me warn you, there’s really no such thing as a safety school in creative writing for the very reason of subjectivity. Even so, new programs are often eager for applicants , and some programs, such as those located in cities deemed less desirable, struggle to deepen their applicant pool, despite their excellent faculty. 56 Education and the Writer Perhaps there are only five schools that interest you. Perhaps you don’t want to attend a creative writing program unless you can get into one of the most competitive ones. That’s all fine and good, and with any luck it’ll all work out in your favor, but you should brace yourself for the possibility that you won’t be going anywhere next year. Applying to graduate schools is costly, and it may be that you can only afford to apply to three or four. If you really want to get into a program, I would urge you to apply to at least one school that’s not as competitive as the others. One last note. Rejection one year doesn’t necessarily mean rejection the next year. Oftentimes, different readers will be winnowing the applications.You’ll be competing against a new set of applicants. Your own work might be stronger the following year. As is often the case with submitting to a magazine, what doesn’t appeal to a reader one day may appeal to her the next day. Applying to graduate schools in creative writing is an arduous and whimsical process, and it’s probably best to keep that in mind in order to maintain your sanity. Letters of Recommendation Autumn in academia. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? The leaves on the trees are turning. Students are playing touch football on the quad. Professors are putting on their best tweed as the temperatures start to drop. The fall semester has come to mean one thing to me: letter of recommendation time. If you’re a professor, fall semester means writing letters of recommendation until your fingertips bleed. A few years ago, I filled out forms for eighty letters of recommendations . Every year that I’m still breathing, the number of letters I write increases exponentially. And since Wake Forest University is the ninth school at which I’ve taught, I sometimes get e- mails from students I barely remember. A few years ago, I received an e-mail from someone who told me that he had...